"Falling Waters of The
Yosemite" is the second-earliest known and
perhaps the most successful Yosemite piece. There have
been many different printings of the sheet music, usually
with Yosemite scenes on the covers (the one pictured here
is the first edition), as it became a favorite with piano
teachers.

"Falling
Waters" might have been surpassed in sales by
the "Yosemite March & Two-Step",
but, curiously, the words "As Played By Arthur Pryor
and his world famous band" are covered with a stripe
of metallic gold ink on the sheet music, indicating that
the publishers' aspirations to fame had been thwarted.

In 1930, Carl
Sharsmith was accepted into the Yosemite School of
Field Natural History--locally known as the Field
School--a chosen handful of the most serious students of
the subject, who were also fairly serious about their
campfire songs. On August 28, 1994, outside his cabin
near Tuolumne Meadows, Dr. Sharsmith sang a bit of one of
their songs for my camcorder; I retrieved the rest of the
words to "Yosemite" from the 1936 Field
School yearbook, which gives the lyricist as Carsten
Ahrens. Used with Sharsmith's son's and daughter's
permission, the snippet of Carl's voice
is a sweet reminder of long-ago campfires. .

"The Last Leaf" (Dr. Carl Sharsmith)
Detail from a watercolor byDiane Detrick Bopp

In an
interview, Dr. Sharsmith said the song "Smiles"
always somehow reminded him of John Muir and Yosemite.
Muir sang the songs of his favorite, Robert Burns, as he
tramped through the wilderness. Ranger Ferdinand
Castillo, long time friend of Dr. Sharsmith's, was fond
of the tune "Twilight on the Trail",
which we'd sing to each other as I'd roll by his post at
Yosemite's east entrance station. In Glenn Hood's
rendition of "Home On The Range", the
lyric touches (with deep irony) on the recent history of
Native Americans in Yosemite, and one is reminded of the
far longer history of native Yosemite music yet to be
compiled.

Wherever people go, they
bring their means of interpreting the mysteries they
encounter. The means may be poetry, art, pop-culture,
science, or music--any of the vast number of ways we see
Yosemite commemorated or depicted. Thus do music,
culture, and Yosemite become intertwined, producing the
unique artifacts presented in "Vintage Songs Of
Yosemite".